The task force heard presentations from the Law Enforcement Subcommittee, Race and Ethnicity Subcommittee and Clemency Subcommittee; the Clemency Subcommittee's recommendation was passed, while the Law Enforcement Subcommittee's recommendations were tabled for the next task force meeting, pending further review.

The Race and Ethnicity Subcommittee presented recommendations for dealing with evidence of longstanding racial bias in Ohio death penalty cases.

A 2005 Associated Press study concluded that offenders
who killed white victims were significantly more likely to receive
the death penalty than when victims were black, regardless of the race
of the defendant. See the below chart, courtesy of the Associated Press, which charts the rate of death sentencing for defendants charged with killing white versus black victims during the course of the study, which was conducted from Oct. 1981-2002. The Supreme Court’s Race and Ethnicity subcommittee made seven recommendations, three of which passed. Those passed include a mandate that all attorneys and judges in death penalty cases attend training to detect and protect against racial bias, and that attorneys must seek recusal of judges who are suspected of being motivated by racially discriminatory factors. Implementing the recommendations won't be immediate; according to Bret Crow, Public Information Officer for the Supreme Court of Ohio, task forces typically submit a final report to the Ohio Supreme Court for input, a process that might not be completed until into 2013.

Recommendations that were tabled to be reconsidered at a Sept. 27 meeting of the task force included the recommendation that all death penalty-eligible homicide cases be maintained and monitored for evidence of racial bias by the Office of the Ohio Public Defender.

According to the Associated Press,
the data collection would apply to both old cases and any future
homicides that could result in death penalty allegations. It wouldn’t, however, impact whether or not the death penalty should be an option of punishment in the state of Ohio. Ohio’s death penalty has come under fire several times over the last year, even experiencing an extendedmoratorium on executions set forth by a U.S. District Judge, who ruled that Ohio unconstitutionally wasn’t following its own death penalty procedure and couldn’t be trusted to ethically carry out executions.

CityBeatreported on July 3 about the avoided execution of Abdul Awkal, a Muslim who narrowly escaped his death penalty sentence with the help of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center (OJPC). Awkal was ruled not competent enough to be executed after making several statements suggesting he didn’t understand the reason for his execution.

Released Monday, the FBI’s annual crime report for last year further underscores the fact that imposing capital punishment on criminals doesn’t act as a deterrent to homicides.

The report, Crime in the United States 2008, reveals that in 13 of the 14 states that didn’t have the death penalty last year, the murder rate was below the national rate of 5.4 homicides per 100,000 people.

Ohioans to Stop Executions and other human rights groups are asking Gov. John Kasich to halt any further executions of inmates until the Ohio Supreme Court completes its review of the state’s death penalty process.

The groups, which include the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) in Cincinnati, say the U.S. Supreme Court has denied a petition by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to review an August 2011 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. That means the exoneration of Death Row inmate Joe D’Ambrosio is upheld.

Convicted murderer to be first execution since moratorium lifted

Gov. John Kasich today
denied a request for executive clemency from Mark Wayne Wiles, who
was convicted in 1986 of the murder of 15-year-old Mark Klima in the
northeast Ohio township of Rootstown.

Wiles is scheduled to
be executed April 18 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in
Lucasville. According to the clemency report, members of the Ohio
Parole Board on March 2 interviewed Wiles via video-conference from
the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, after which arguments in
support of and in opposition to clemency were presented. The board
voted 8-0 against recommending clemency.

Ohio was subjected to a
moratorium on executions from November of 2011 until April 4, 2012,
when U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost of Newark lifted the
moratorium he invoked for the state’s inability to follow its own execution
protocol. The moratorium was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court
in February.

CityBeat reported here
that despite lifting the moratorium, Frost expressed frustration with
the state’s problems carrying out executions, despite the errors
being largely minor paperwork technicalities, including “not
properly documenting that an inmate’s medical files were reviewed
and switching the official whose job it was to announce the start and
finish times of the lethal injection.”

From CityBeat’s
Politics/Issues blog April 6:

Since the
moratorium, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has
allegedly scrutinized its procedural policies and implemented a new
"Incident Command System," which sounds like an initiative
for ORDC Director Gary Mohr to more closely micromanage the processes
during state executions.

"This court is therefore
willing to trust Ohio just enough to permit the scheduled execution,"
Frost wrote regarding his rejection of Wiles' stay of execution. "The
court reaches this conclusion with some trepidation given Ohio's
history of telling this court what (they) think they need to say in
order to conduct executions and then not following through on
promised reforms."

To date, Ohio has executed 386 convicted murderers. Click here for a schedule of upcoming executions in Ohio and here for recent clemency reports.

Hamilton County has been killing people more often than Ohio counties of similar size, despite actually asking for the death penalty less often. Today'sEnquirer takes a look at the growing opposition to the death
penalty in other states and recent legislation and task forces aimed
at either studying its effectiveness or stopping the practice
altogether. Prosecutor Joe Deters says he's going to kill all the people who deserve it because the law is still the law.

Would you like to pay tolls or higher
gas taxes in order to have a new Brent Spence Bridge? No? Then you're
like a majority of people who take the time to respond to Enquirer polls.

City Manager Milton Dohoney plans to
ask City Council to raise the property tax rate in response to a
projected $33 million 2013 deficit that everyone knows was coming.

So last Thursday Romney held a surprise
press conference at Solyndra's shuttered headquarters. During his
prepared statement, Romney said:

"An independent inspector general
looked at this investment and concluded that the Administration had
steered money to friends and family and campaign contributors."

Romney then repeated the claim later in
the press conference.

Small problem: No inspector
general ever "concluded" such a thing, at least not based
on any written reports or public statements.

Wisconsin Gov./Union Crusher Scott
Walker holds a slight lead over his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee
Mayor Tom Barrett, according to a recent poll.

George Zimmerman is back in jail after
what his attorney is calling a misunderstanding over telling a judge
that he had limited money even though a website set up to fund his
legal defense raised more than $135,000.

Connecticut is 17th to abolish capital punishment

Connecticut will soon join the list of states that have ended
the use of capital punishment.

In an 86-63 vote, legislators in Connecticut’s House of
Representatives passed the bill Wednesday night. The state Senate approved the
measure April 5, in a 20-16 vote.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a
Democrat, has indicated he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk,
probably sometime this week. A similar bill was vetoed by then-Gov. Jodi Rell,
a Republican, in 2009.

Connecticut’s law is
prospective in nature, and won’t affect the sentences of the 11 people
currently on the state’s death row.

In the last five years, New
Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Illinois have repealed the death penalty,
according to CNN. California voters will decide the issue in November.

Other states that have
abolished capital punishment are Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and
Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, a man who spent 21 years on Ohio’s death row until he was
exonerated in 2010 will speak tonight at a forum in Clifton.

Joe D’Ambrosio
will discuss his experience and
why he believes the death penalty should be scrapped at 6:30 p.m. at the St.
Monica-St. George Parish Newman Center, located at 328 W. McMillan St. D’Ambrosio
will be joined by the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, a Roman Catholic priest who worked
to get him released.

D’Ambrosio was wrongfully
convicted of the 1988 murder of Anthony Klann in Cleveland. Cuyahoga County
prosecutors withheld 10 pieces of evidence that would have exonerated
D’Ambrosio at his trial and implicated another suspect in the crime, a judge
ruled in March 2010.

D’Ambrosio is the
140th Death Row exoneration in the United States since 1973 and the sixth
in Ohio.

This week’s Porkopolis column
looks at a report from Amnesty International about the use of capital
punishment throughout the world, and how the United States is one of the only
industrialized nations that still condones the practice.

Letter to governor points to new cocktail of drugs as culprit

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio on
Sunday asked Gov. John Kasich to halt the death penalty across the
state, following the botched execution of convicted killer Dennis McGuire
that reportedly lasted 26 minutes.

McGuire’s prolonged execution, the longest since Ohio
resumed capital punishment in 1999, was carried out on Jan. 16 with a
new cocktail of drugs that had never been tried before in the United
States. The use of the new drugs came about after Ohio ran out of its
previous supplies.

With its letter, the ACLU joined other groups, including
Ohioans to Stop Executions, in calling for an end or pause to
state-sanctioned killing.

“This is not about Dennis McGuire, his terrible crimes, or
the crimes of others who await execution on death row,” reads the ACLU
letter. “It is about our duty as a society that sits in judgment of
those who are convicted of crimes to treat them humanely and ensure
their punishment does not violate the Constitution.”

The letter adds, “We are mere months away from new
recommendations from the Ohio Supreme Court Taskforce on the
Administration of the Death Penalty that could alter our system for the
better. On the eve of monumental changes, along with increasing problems
with lethal injection, is not now the time to step back and pause?”

McGuire’s family also announced on Friday it would file a lawsuit claiming his death constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Five more people await execution in Ohio this year, according to the ACLU. It’s
unclear whether the state will use the same cocktail of drugs following
McGuire’s execution.

During a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises
in Aurora, Colorado last night, a gunman walked into a theater, threw
tear gas, and opened fire. Police identified James Holmes as
the suspect in the shooting. Twelve were killed and at least 50 were
wounded. On Twitter, one witness lamented that “there is no dark knight,
no hero, that could save us from anything like this.”

Cincinnati Police Chief James Craig will learn later this summer if he'll be required to undergo additional training and take the state police exam. Craig and his attorneys yesterday told the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission about his 36 years of policing experience.

This summer, Ohio families will receive health
insurance rebates as part of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care
Act. The average family will receive $139. In total, Ohioans will be getting back $11.3 million.